I live in Los Angeles and I'm lucky enough to write about the thing I love most: movies. I'm a graduate of Vassar College and Northwestern University and for 15 years I worked at Forbes mostly covering the entertainment industry. Although I've moved into the world of corporate journalism, I still contribute blog posts here.

How Goldie Hawn Is Helping Kids Focus In School

Kids these days are under a lot of pressure. Schools are more focused than ever on test scores. Kids are expected to not only work hard but excel on the sports field and to take part in lots of character-boosting extracurricular activities. According to a report from the Robert Wood Jonhson Foundation and NPR, one-third of parents say their kids have experienced a lot of stress at school.

And we all know stress can be harmful, especially for growing children. Excessive stress can not only lead to kids freezing up and struggling in school but to chronic health problems.

It’s an issue actress Goldie Hawn feels passionately about.

“I wanted to look at the kids themselves, not the schools, and study what’s going on with their mental states,” says Hawn.

The actress spoke Thursday at Forbes’ Power Women Conference on a panel focused on harnessing the power of the brain. If Hawn, who is best known for her ditzy characters, seems like an odd addition to that panel (which also included Dr. Faraz Farzin of LumosityLumosity and Dr. Cori Bargmann of The Rockefeller University) than you haven’t been keeping up with Hawn’s work.

For the past 12 years the actress has been working with a team of educators, neuroscientists and psychologists to develop Mind Up, a program designed to help children learn to focus and control themselves. Children learn about neuroscience (in a kid-friendly way)and work meditation break into their days.

“The children take to meditation like a duck to water,” says Hawn. “The brain is like any other muscle. It needs to be trained. They like the quiet and it helps them.”

Mind Up teaches children about what happens in their brains when they meditate and how quiet time helps everything from decision making to creativity. According to the Mind Up website, 82% of children who have taken part in the program reported having a more positive outlook, 81% learned to make themselves happy and 58% tried to help others more often.

Hawn says that when she started the program, administrators looked at her like she was crazy. But as school struggle to help stressed kids, more are adopting her program. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently did this story on Basalt Elementary School in Colorado where kids take “mind breaks” and learn about the cerebral cortex.

Hawn says that the ultimate goal is not to help kids do better on tests but to help them have better experiences with things like test taking.

“We want them to have a state of well being, a more positive outlook and a sense of hope,” says Hawn. “Whether they do better on their tests is subjective. The important thing is that they go into their tests feeling positive.

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